


one against the other

by AllegoriesInMediasRes



Series: Mary I of England: AU stories [8]
Category: 16th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF, The Tudors (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Oneshot, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 22:31:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18485752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/pseuds/AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: 1540. In a much happier world where Mary must still grapple with her conscience, she considers what is one bastard against another.Inspired by mihrsuri’s “Rewrite the Stars for You”, an alternate sketch where something else blooms between the King, Queen, and their most trusted prime minister. Also set in the same universe as my own work “If You Love This Coast”.





	one against the other

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Rewrite The Stars For You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13066005) by [mihrsuri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mihrsuri/pseuds/mihrsuri). 



_Would I have done this for Henry Fitzroy? For Bessie Blount?_

Mary has often thought that she is glad it is Anne Boleyn who is her stepmother and not Bessie Blount; Anne is _nothing_ like Bessie, who threw herself at a married man and was partially the reason Mary was separated from her mother for so long. Anne has always been kind and loving and warm, far beyond how many other women might have been to their husband’s trueborn daughter from a previous marriage who is royal twice over, entirely unlike Bessie.

And yet Mary can admit that while Anne is kind, she is also ambitious: she believes ardently in reforming the Church, and while Anne loves her father, being Queen does offer her the chance to implement those reforms. In another world, might Anne have come to her father’s attention while he was still tied to Katherine of Aragon? Would Mary have been able to accept her into her heart as easily then?

And while Bessie had tried to push her bastard in front of Mary, at least Fitzroy had been her half-brother. The dark-haired boy Mary currently bounces on her lap holds no royal blood at all. What is the difference, then?

Perhaps it is simply because she had the years and time to get to know Anne, to love her and accept her, before the truth slapped her in the face ( _the time and years to sink her claws into Mary, claws of love, to embed them firmly enough that she knew Mary would never be able to yank them out, even if she wanted to_ ). Years to cast Bessie Blount as the ultimate villain in her own mind, while Anne was the one who came out of the wings and saved everything. Years in which she got to know and love Elizabeth and Thomas and George ( _and how she thanks God that at least Thomas is legitimate, that she will not kneel before a false King, and how she prays that Thomas does not go the way of his Uncle Arthur_ ).

And yet it is unfair to say that Anne was the one who saved her, or that Bessie was the ultimate villain; both women might have tried to persuade the King one way or another, but ultimately it is Mary’s father with all the power, the one who decided to leave his wife and legitimize his bastard son and separate mother from daughter and reverse those decisions. And she knows how tenuous their place in his favor was: when Fitzroy had died, Bessie had immediately been shipped off to the country and palmed off on some courtier. When Anne had suffered that second miscarriage, Henry had refused to even visit her and begun paying court to Jane Seymour.

No, Anne is not all that different from Bessie, much as Mary likes to keep them separate in her mind, and yet she loves Anne’s bastard as her own sibling while she is quietly relieved that Bessie’s bastard found himself in an early grave rather than in the succession ahead of her.

It is a question she will never answer, and Mary has learned to simply not consider it.

There are times when she wonders ( _hopes_ ) if her father will ever tire of the Duke of Essex; he loves passionately but briefly ( _her mother, Bessie, Jane Seymour_ ), and had Anne not given him a son, she may well have followed in their footsteps. And yet Cromwell _gave him a son_ as well: more than that, Father loved him enough to give him the chance to give him a son, and that may well have secured him forever in her father’s favor along with Anne.

 


End file.
